Is joy and celebration going away in the USA today?

[Eric the Green]

Is joy and celebration going away in the USA today?

I think today's high prices, not just in the last year, but decades now, are curtailing the possibilities of life for all. I don't know how real estate prices, for example, can come down, but they are killing the life of great cities. Something's gotta break. Everything costs too much. Permits for law enforcement quintupling so people can't go to a kite flying festival in Berkeley. Art schools closing because of high real estate prices and tuition costs. Only a few people can afford to be artists. Musicians still can't play in some places. Just all over the place. Covid seems to have dealt a big blow to the things that make life fun.

There needs to be a recovery from this, short term and long term. Maybe some owners of real estate need to lose the value of their homes and offices. So be it. If the best cities in the country force their residents to work all the time, and close themselves off from anyone moving there who is not wealthy, that is a world that needs to "come around" to a newer world where most people can do real living again.

This wasn't my favorite song, but I got to like it. I think it summarizes what is being lost today. And it takes on some melancholy when I think of the people shot down at a 4th of July Parade this year. And I note that this massacre happened in a suburb of Chicago. Guns, high prices, low incomes, climate disasters, pandemics, fanatic believers, ruin things today. Can we recover our joy of life, or will we live in fear and relative poverty?

[JasonBlack]

"Is joy and celebration going away in the USA today?"
This is what I've been saying all along. It's passé to hate on America, tell everyone who wants to defend America that they're a "white supremacist" and even talk about how we deserve all the trouble we're in and maybe it's a good thing that our time in the sun is up.

Most people are not filled with joy and celebration when they are faced with the combination of their economy and way of life falling apart and the media and elites holding them in contempt. The weak become crestfallen and guilt ridden, the strong become increasingly adversarial and dig in their heels, but neither is experiencing joy and celebration. At this point, we are a dying country that doesn't even want to save itself. This is what the world looks like when nationalism is viewed as racist and oppressive and people give up because they feel like they have nothing to fight for.

[Eric the Green]

(08-03-2022, 04:20 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: "Is joy and celebration going away in the USA today?"
This is what I've been saying all along. It's passé to hate on America, tell everyone who wants to defend America that they're a "white supremacist" and even talk about how we deserve all the trouble we're in and maybe it's a good thing that our time in the sun is up.

Most people are not filled with joy and celebration when they are faced with the combination of their economy and way of life falling apart and the media and elites holding them in contempt. The weak become crestfallen and guilt ridden, the strong become increasingly adversarial and dig in their heels, but neither is experiencing joy and celebration.  At this point, we are a dying country that doesn't even want to save itself. This is what the world looks like when nationalism is viewed as racist and oppressive and people give up because they feel like they have nothing to fight for.

I of course have the opposite diagnosis about the source. All the things that *I* mentioned are the result of conservative policies. And that certainly includes "economy and way of life falling apart" for most people.

If people are creatfallen and guilt ridden because some people point out the problems in our country, that is ON THEM. The thing to realize is to listen to the sixties/seventies musicians, and help them change the world. Listen to the song. The celebration of life is what we're talking about. People smiling, people touching, people dancing, slow rolling on bikes, balloons and arts and music. The 4th of July is just an occasion for what the song says can be every day. Nationalism is a poor symbolic substitute for real life.

And it's not a fight. But if you want to make it a fight, do it with gusto, and be sure you are fighting for the best causes. Not for your race or your nation, but for what gives and preserves our lives. (and for those things about our nation, and about some other nations, that happen to do this)

Rick Steves recently showed me how many festivals Europe has, and they go back centuries. Some new traditions of celebration started up in the sixties. Mostly held by people against war. I hope they come back again.

[JasonBlack]

(08-03-2022, 05:15 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: If people are crestfallen and guilt ridden because some people point out the problems in our country, that is ON THEM.

On one hand I agree with this (I have been calling for , but on the other hand, if you want people to experience "joy and celebration", you shouldn't be surprised that that doesn't happen when the majority of social discourse is promoting precisely the opposite.

Quote:The thing to realize is to listen to the sixties/seventies musicians, and help them change the world. Listen to the song. The celebration of life is what we're talking about. People smiling, people touching, people dancing, slow rolling on bikes, balloons and arts and music. The 4th of July is just an occasion for what the song says can be every day. Nationalism is a poor symbolic substitute for real life.

And it's not a fight. But if you want to make it a fight, do it with gusto, and be sure you are fighting for the best causes. Not for your race or your nation, but for what gives and preserves our lives. (and for those things about our nation, and about some other nations, that happen to do this)

Rick Steves recently showed me how many festivals Europe has, and they go back centuries. Some new traditions of celebration started up in the sixties. Mostly held by people against war. I hope they come back again.

but that's just it....Democrats IRL tend to be disrespectful and blame game-y too. It is as you say, this is about "real life", not disagreements on policy.

I will grant you that, in most other contexts, this would be an appeal to emotion, but in this instance, promoting the right kind of emotions is precisely the point.

[pbrower2a]

I usually go to see fireworks on July 4. I did, but this year I couldn't because some @$$hole shot up a Fourth of July parade about 150 miles away in Highland Park, Illinois. I may have driven through Highland Park only once in my life, and then on an Interstate, bus still...

Maybe some mass shootings, as in Uvalde, Texas or in Sandy Hook, Connecticut burn our consciousness even if we have no connection. Media know how to appeal to our empathy, and it is just as well that we have empathy. A school where kids are preparing for adult life. Children need to get the most out of childhood if they are to become competent adults.

Most of us have empathy, so we are sickened. The problem isn't that someone shooting up a movie theater, a place of worship, or a Christmas parade sickens us. The problem is that someone does something that can only sicken us.

COVID-19 killed like a major war, and still does, if with a different demographic than soldiers. Civilians are targets, and I can imagine an enemy targeting the housing of the workers in the munitions factories and the highways and bridges that bring them into work. Even commuting to war work will make one a target if one is in a traffic jam leading to the tank factory. Let's start with the observation that Donald Trump is the worst sort of leader to deal with such a crisis as a war or a plague. He has been more capable of appealing to the vilest attributes of human nature instead of to the best. This is not a partisan smear. Trump has no empathy, as one would expect from a sociopath, so he cannot understand it in others. Have me as President at the time, and I would be appealing to the best in human nature, like the recognition of tragedy as such. I'd play up the heritage of Americans meeting great dangers from Valley Forge to Iwo Jima. I'd praise medical researchers and the pharmaceutical companies for their research and development. I would praise commercial entities for doing things that keep the economy going. I would make sure that the appropriate life-affirming messages go out -- wear masks, stay home as much as possible, wash for at least twenty seconds (count to thirty), and avoid big congregations. I would remind people that patience saves lives. Life is precious.

I'd ensure that everyone gets a food-aid card. That's the least expensive welfare that there is, as the expenditures go right back into the commercial economy. If one loses a job, then one can at least eat well. Still doing well? I'd authorize a tax break for people to give money to their favorite small businesses so that those businesses can pay rent, taxes, maintenance, and insurance.

Most importantly I would try to keep us all connected. To that end I would get the post office in the act -- to get people writing letters to fellow shut-ins. People would get stationery, envelopes, stamps, and pens and pencils (with appropriate propaganda) and be told to write letters. If people can not hear your voice or see you one-on-one, then at least they can see the precious handwriting. How about some current equivalents of V-letters? The COVID-19 plague is a war!

Obviously I do not think like Donald Trump, and it is not only because I am a liberal and because he is a near-fascist. I am satisfied that Ronald Reagan would have done far better than Donald Trump, thank you.

...and once the vaccines are available, we get people connected to them. I got mine at the first opportunity because of age (having just turned 65) and having an auto-immune disorder (psoriasis). Needless to say the propaganda machine would remain functioning.

Over a million people have died in America of a respiratory virus that kills as such viruses kill in far poorer countries today or in the past when there were no good measures against respiratory infections. We thought that we were safe, and we weren't.

I have smeared Donald Trump at seemingly every turn. It's not for difference. I can respect people of very different culture and ethnic heritage because of shared values. I cannot respect someone whose values go no further than self-indulgence and anger at any frustration. He has done great harm to America, harm that will not go away quickly. Yes, we should feel awful about the effects of a sociopath as President, one who has shown contempt for science, old decencies that most of us take for granted, and norms of mature behavior. Enough of us voted for him that we should be scared of some other right-wing populist appealing to white male rage and offering us solutions that require that we sacrifice our freedom and our moral values.

[Eric the Green]

Agree with all, except for letting Reagan off the hook. He did the same thing to AIDS as Trump did with covid. He instituted neoliberalism which has led to our current plight: climate breakdown, severe inequality, police assaults, rampant gun violence, you name it, it can all be put at the doorstep of the corrupt Ronald Reagan. He was an extremist, not a moderate. Trump is just Reagan with a bit of economic nationalism added, and racism TRUMPeted instead of just alluded to. Trump has taken Reagan's neoliberal assault on the environment to an extreme.

[Eric the Green]

(08-03-2022, 04:13 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(08-03-2022, 05:15 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: If people are crestfallen and guilt ridden because some people point out the problems in our country, that is ON THEM.

On one hand I agree with this (I have been calling for , but on the other hand, if you want people to experience "joy and celebration", you shouldn't be surprised that that doesn't happen when the majority of social discourse is promoting precisely the opposite.

Quote:The thing to realize is to listen to the sixties/seventies musicians, and help them change the world. Listen to the song. The celebration of life is what we're talking about. People smiling, people touching, people dancing, slow rolling on bikes, balloons and arts and music. The 4th of July is just an occasion for what the song says can be every day. Nationalism is a poor symbolic substitute for real life.

And it's not a fight. But if you want to make it a fight, do it with gusto, and be sure you are fighting for the best causes. Not for your race or your nation, but for what gives and preserves our lives. (and for those things about our nation, and about some other nations, that happen to do this)

Rick Steves recently showed me how many festivals Europe has, and they go back centuries. Some new traditions of celebration started up in the sixties. Mostly held by people against war. I hope they come back again.

but that's just it....Democrats IRL tend to be disrespectful and blame game-y too. It is as you say, this is about "real life", not disagreements on policy.

I will grant you that, in most other contexts, this would be an appeal to emotion, but in this instance, promoting the right kind of emotions is precisely the point.

It depends on what you mean by social discourse promoting precisely the opposite. Circumstances that have happened because of our assault on Nature promoted by neoliberal conservatives, like pandemics, exploding disasters, and so on, require conscious liberals to say "stay safe" instead of "have fun." There is the exaggerated fear of sexuality that has grown up around the sexual harrasment and assault issue as well as diseases like AIDS and now monkeypox. Touching others is now as forbidden as it once was in the conformist society of the 1950s or the Victorian era or almost as bad as in many supposedly Muslim countries. 

So, to some extent, I am just feeling it's too bad it's this way. It is not so easy to have celebrations in the park when we are so polarized. And when everything is so expensive. When costs for property and security shut everything down. And I point my finger at neoliberalism for the expensiveness. Whether I am right about that, you can debate me. The contentious attitudes exist on both sides, no doubt. This celebration would be more possible though without the real threats to our safety that happen today. That's the irony and the point about the 4th of July in this song. On the same date and same location alluded to in this song, the celebration was ruined by an AR-15, without which the young maladjusted kid could not have killed anyone. And it is ruining the joy of life everywhere, and for everyone. And sad to say, you support this.

Nationalism is not the right kind of emotion. It is a substitute for real life, is what I said. It is the policies that are worth promoting, and with some passion too, and which are resisted because of appeals to slogans, symbols, emotions, fears and identity divisions, mostly by the right wing that now controls the Republican Party.

And by the way, if "nationalism" is linked to racism today, that is probably mostly because racists call themselves nationalists, or white nationalists. And it's true you could probably go back to black groups too in the sixties who referred to "black nationalism" to promote greater power for black people.

[Eric the Green]

Some more musical slices of real life.

And it's real. Can you dig it?





Sure is mellow grazin' in the grass (grazin' in the grass, it's a gas, baby, can you dig it?)
What a trip just watchin' as the world goes past (grazin' in the grass, it's a gas, baby, can you dig it?)
There are too many groovy things to see while grazin' in the grass (grazin' in the grass, it's a gas, baby, can you dig it?)
Flowers with colours for takin', everything outta sight (grazin' in the grass, it's a gas, baby, can you dig it?)
The sun beamin' down between the leaves (grazin' in the grass, it's a gas, baby, can you dig it?)
And the bir-ir-ir-irds dartin' in and out of the trees (grazin' in the grass, it's a gas, baby, can you dig it?)
Everything here is so clear, you can see it
And everything here is so real, you can feel it
And it's real, so real, so real, so real, so real, so real
Can you dig it?
I can dig it, he can dig it, she can dig it, we can dig it, they can dig it, you can dig it
Oh, let's dig it. Can you dig it, baby?
I can dig it, he can dig it, she can dig it, we can dig it, they can dig it, you can dig it
Oh, let's dig it. Can you dig it, baby?
------ instrumental break ------
The sun peekin' out between the leaves (grazin' in the grass, it's a gas, baby, can you dig it?)
And the bir-ir-ir-irds dartin' in and out of the trees (grazin' in the grass, it's a gas, baby, can you dig it?)
Everything here is so clear, you can see it
And everything here is so real, you can feel it
And it's real, so real, so real, so real, so real, so real
Can you dig it?
I can dig it, he can dig it, she can dig it, we can dig it, they can dig it, you can dig it
Oh, let's dig it. Can you dig it, baby?
I can dig it, he can dig it, she can dig it, we can dig it, they can dig it, you can dig it
Oh, let's dig it. Can you dig it, baby?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grazing_in_the_Grass
https://genius.com/The-friends-of-distin...ass-lyrics


To Claudia on Thursday
Millennium





Take off your shoes and feel the grass
Lie back and let the hours pass
Don't give a thought to anything in the world but you and me
Let the heavens kiss you with the breeze
Let the sunshine see you through the trees
Don't give a thought to anything in the world but you and me
Just take your time and let me get into your smile
Relax and find just what we can feel for a while
Open up your heart and breathe the air
Let the wind and light play in your hair
Don't give a thought to anything in the world but you and me
Just take a look and see all the love in the sky
And when you do the love will reflect in your eye
Sing me a song without a sound
And I will hear it through the ground
Don't give a thought to anything in the world but you and me
And everyone

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Joseph Stec / Michael Fennelly

[pbrower2a]

(08-03-2022, 11:36 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Agree with all, except for letting Reagan off the hook. He did the same thing to AIDS as Trump did with covid. He instituted neoliberalism which has led to our current plight: climate breakdown, severe inequality, police assaults, rampant gun violence, you name it, it can all be put at the doorstep of the corrupt Ronald Reagan. He was an extremist, not a moderate. Trump is just Reagan with a bit of economic nationalism added, and racism TRUMPeted instead of just alluded to. Trump has taken Reagan's neoliberal assault on the environment to an extreme.

Flawed as Reagan was, he was much more rational than Donald Trump. He was a standing joke for environmentalists of the time for seeing trees solely as lumber and paper. Unpleasant as it may be to admit, he was in the mainstream at the time on homosexuality, still believing that most gays fit the pattern of child-molesting "chicken-hawks", people definitely to be avoided if one is a boy. guess what? Forty years later the child-molesting pervs are even more marginalized, as the homosexuals in fully-adult relationships have become the mainstream. Reagan was also a more adept politician. 

Yes, he was a nightmare for the poor; he had come to the believe that Corporate America was the engine of economic progress without which social progress (which he defined as consumerism) was impossible. He was the bête noir of environmentalists who saw trees as more than lumber and paper. America is not what it was in the 1980's. The shopping-mall "culture" that peaked when Reagan was President no longer excites us. Let's not forget his attitude toward organized labor. By current standards, Reagan was the front-man for the trend of increasing disparities of economic results with the intensification of poverty as a norm. Reagan believed as did Corporate America in jobs -- just in not paying people adequately to live on those. The corporate solutions to inadequate pay on the jobs was for people to work two such jobs, which makes one as much a consumer but more a toiler.

Trump is Reagan's faults on steroids with none of the rationality, including the ability to back off when one sees dissent. Trump loves to hear people express grief and pain when hurt, and he turns up the pain-creating stimulus when he hears or sees such. Trump is a sadistic sociopath. He is far less astute than Reagan. He can never back down hen facts contradict him. He is responsive to only the anti-scientific, superstitious part of the American populace that got him elected. 

The big problem with AIDS was that gays were still pariahs in much of America. The popular view was that they were "chicken-hawks" who exploited boys. The loudest ones of the 1970's were the NAMbLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association. The majority of homosexuals were men who could love men but not women... well, I can accept that. There but for the Grace of God go I, but if I were gay I would certainly never mess with boys. Gays had to change their behavior if they were to not be ravaged, and many caught on. Use a condom and develop monogamy... and stay away from street drugs. Medical transmission was easier to stop after people found that people were contracting AIDS from recklessly-discarded needles, skin grafts, and blood transfusions. Medical personnel changed their ways fast. The slowest to get the message were users of injectable drugs such as heroin. Many such people are prostitutes, obvious vectors of AIDS. 

People had to change their ways to avoid getting a deadly disease. COVID-19 isn't AIDS, but much that medical science and public health have learned  from AIDS has been applied to COVID-19, even if the methods of transmission are quite different. The hardest part was to compel people to do things that reduce the spread. None of it was easy, but that had to be done before the more definitive prevention was available (the vaccine). Trump failed to debunk the COVID-19 "truthers" who offered everything other than a rational response. Trump somehow felt their pain about wearing masks, frequent hand-washing, sanitary wiping, amd avoiding mass activities. Who says that reality is easy to deal with? That is all that we have.

I used Reagan in full knowledge of his faults -- and his ability to get a coherent message across.  That difference is enough to suggest how horrid Trump was as President.

[beechnut79]

(08-04-2022, 09:25 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-03-2022, 11:36 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Agree with all, except for letting Reagan off the hook. He did the same thing to AIDS as Trump did with covid. He instituted neoliberalism which has led to our current plight: climate breakdown, severe inequality, police assaults, rampant gun violence, you name it, it can all be put at the doorstep of the corrupt Ronald Reagan. He was an extremist, not a moderate. Trump is just Reagan with a bit of economic nationalism added, and racism TRUMPeted instead of just alluded to. Trump has taken Reagan's neoliberal assault on the environment to an extreme.

Flawed as Reagan was, he was much more rational than Donald Trump. He was a standing joke for environmentalists of the time for seeing trees solely as lumber and paper. Unpleasant as it may be to admit, he was in the mainstream at the time on homosexuality, still believing that most gays fit the pattern of child-molesting "chicken-hawks", people definitely to be avoided if one is a boy. guess what? Forty years later the child-molesting pervs are even more marginalized, as the homosexuals in fully-adult relationships have become the mainstream. Reagan was also a more adept politician. 

Yes, he was a nightmare for the poor; he had come to the believe that Corporate America was the engine of economic progress without which social progress (which he defined as consumerism) was impossible. He was the bête noir of environmentalists who saw trees as more than lumber and paper. America is not what it was in the 1980's. The shopping-mall "culture" that peaked when Reagan was President no longer excites us. Let's not forget his attitude toward organized labor. By current standards, Reagan was the front-man for the trend of increasing disparities of economic results with the intensification of poverty as a norm. Reagan believed as did Corporate America in jobs -- just in not paying people adequately to live on those. The corporate solutions to inadequate pay on the jobs was for people to work two such jobs, which makes one as much a consumer but more a toiler.

Trump is Reagan's faults on steroids with none of the rationality, including the ability to back off when one sees dissent. Trump loves to hear people express grief and pain when hurt, and he turns up the pain-creating stimulus when he hears or sees such. Trump is a sadistic sociopath. He is far less astute than Reagan. He can never back down hen facts contradict him. He is responsive to only the anti-scientific, superstitious part of the American populace that got him elected. 

The big problem with AIDS was that gays were still pariahs in much of America. The popular view was that they were "chicken-hawks" who exploited boys. The loudest ones of the 1970's were the NAMbLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association. The majority of homosexuals were men who could love men but not women... well, I can accept that. There but for the Grace of God go I, but if I were gay I would certainly never mess with boys. Gays had to change their behavior if they were to not be ravaged, and many caught on. Use a condom and develop monogamy... and stay away from street drugs. Medical transmission was easier to stop after people found that people were contracting AIDS from recklessly-discarded needles, skin grafts, and blood transfusions. Medical personnel changed their ways fast. The slowest to get the message were users of injectable drugs such as heroin. Many such people are prostitutes, obvious vectors of AIDS. 

People had to change their ways to avoid getting a deadly disease. COVID-19 isn't AIDS, but much that medical science and public health have learned  from AIDS has been applied to COVID-19, even if the methods of transmission are quite different. The hardest part was to compel people to do things that reduce the spread. None of it was easy, but that had to be done before the more definitive prevention was available (the vaccine). Trump failed to debunk the COVID-19 "truthers" who offered everything other than a rational response. Trump somehow felt their pain about wearing masks, frequent hand-washing, sanitary wiping, amd avoiding mass activities. Who says that reality is easy to deal with? That is all that we have.

I used Reagan in full knowledge of his faults -- and his ability to get a coherent message across.  That difference is enough to suggest how horrid Trump was as President.

I shall now attempt a paragraph by paragraph response:

P1:  I don't know if any of you follow Thom Hartmann's program which can be heard on a handful of progressive-minded radio stations and also on YouTube, but he has often laid so many of our current problems, including the rise of Trump, squarely at Reagan's feet.  You can find many clips on YT that pertain to this. His busting of the unions in 1981 proved to be in many minds including my own, the requiem for middle class prosperity as it had come to be known. By 1987 we had a greater homeless problem than at any time since the Great Depression. In addition to the lumber and paper comment, he was also credited with declaring ketchup to be a vegetable.

P2: Regarding RWR's attitude on jobs, there was a story I read in which the so-called Paycheck to Paycheck crowd often has to work two jobs for the same pay that one job once provided. They are for the most part a luckless lot, stuck in place, with very little room for escape save for some stroke of luck such as a lottery win. They were labeled Generation LIMBO. All caps because, from the information given I was able to create the perfect acronym. Lower Income Mostly Beyond Overhaul.

P3: I thought about the steroids remark a few time, but you are the first I have actually heard use it.  Perhaps fitting because it was during the Reagan years when Trump first hit the cultural landscape as a celebrity real estate developer. One time I did actually talk with a woman who had met him along with his recently deceased first wife. She was of the opinion that he was easier to talk with than she was.

P4: The AIDS scare definitely slammed the brakes on the sexual revolution, and not long after what was labeled the cocooning movement set in where one-time partiers were spending weekend night at home watching movies on their VCRs (now obsolete) and eating, say, takeout teriyaki. Demand for takeout food exploded some three decades before the convenience obsession went even further with home delivery now being nearly everywhere. Seems to me though that Americans tend to be homebodies during three out of the four turnings, that only during an Awakening is the sanctity of home and hearth seriously challenged.

P5: There is still much debate as to whether the mass lockdowns which decimated many if not most businesses for a period of several months was the way to go. Much of the residue remains despite a somewhat return to normalcy. People going out to eat again, etc. Thought not quite a return to previous congestion levels.

[pbrower2a]

(08-09-2022, 09:49 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(08-04-2022, 09:25 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-03-2022, 11:36 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Agree with all, except for letting Reagan off the hook. He did the same thing to AIDS as Trump did with covid. He instituted neoliberalism which has led to our current plight: climate breakdown, severe inequality, police assaults, rampant gun violence, you name it, it can all be put at the doorstep of the corrupt Ronald Reagan. He was an extremist, not a moderate. Trump is just Reagan with a bit of economic nationalism added, and racism TRUMPeted instead of just alluded to. Trump has taken Reagan's neoliberal assault on the environment to an extreme.

Flawed as Reagan was, he was much more rational than Donald Trump. He was a standing joke for environmentalists of the time for seeing trees solely as lumber and paper. Unpleasant as it may be to admit, he was in the mainstream at the time on homosexuality, still believing that most gays fit the pattern of child-molesting "chicken-hawks", people definitely to be avoided if one is a boy. guess what? Forty years later the child-molesting pervs are even more marginalized, as the homosexuals in fully-adult relationships have become the mainstream. Reagan was also a more adept politician. 

Yes, he was a nightmare for the poor; he had come to the believe that Corporate America was the engine of economic progress without which social progress (which he defined as consumerism) was impossible. He was the bête noir of environmentalists who saw trees as more than lumber and paper. America is not what it was in the 1980's. The shopping-mall "culture" that peaked when Reagan was President no longer excites us. Let's not forget his attitude toward organized labor. By current standards, Reagan was the front-man for the trend of increasing disparities of economic results with the intensification of poverty as a norm. Reagan believed as did Corporate America in jobs -- just in not paying people adequately to live on those. The corporate solutions to inadequate pay on the jobs was for people to work two such jobs, which makes one as much a consumer but more a toiler.

Trump is Reagan's faults on steroids with none of the rationality, including the ability to back off when one sees dissent. Trump loves to hear people express grief and pain when hurt, and he turns up the pain-creating stimulus when he hears or sees such. Trump is a sadistic sociopath. He is far less astute than Reagan. He can never back down hen facts contradict him. He is responsive to only the anti-scientific, superstitious part of the American populace that got him elected. 

The big problem with AIDS was that gays were still pariahs in much of America. The popular view was that they were "chicken-hawks" who exploited boys. The loudest ones of the 1970's were the NAMbLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association. The majority of homosexuals were men who could love men but not women... well, I can accept that. There but for the Grace of God go I, but if I were gay I would certainly never mess with boys. Gays had to change their behavior if they were to not be ravaged, and many caught on. Use a condom and develop monogamy... and stay away from street drugs. Medical transmission was easier to stop after people found that people were contracting AIDS from recklessly-discarded needles, skin grafts, and blood transfusions. Medical personnel changed their ways fast. The slowest to get the message were users of injectable drugs such as heroin. Many such people are prostitutes, obvious vectors of AIDS. 

People had to change their ways to avoid getting a deadly disease. COVID-19 isn't AIDS, but much that medical science and public health have learned  from AIDS has been applied to COVID-19, even if the methods of transmission are quite different. The hardest part was to compel people to do things that reduce the spread. None of it was easy, but that had to be done before the more definitive prevention was available (the vaccine). Trump failed to debunk the COVID-19 "truthers" who offered everything other than a rational response. Trump somehow felt their pain about wearing masks, frequent hand-washing, sanitary wiping, amd avoiding mass activities. Who says that reality is easy to deal with? That is all that we have.

I used Reagan in full knowledge of his faults -- and his ability to get a coherent message across.  That difference is enough to suggest how horrid Trump was as President.

I shall now attempt a paragraph by paragraph response:

P1:  I don't know if any of you follow Thom Hartmann's program which can be heard on a handful of progressive-minded radio stations and also on YouTube, but he has often laid so many of our current problems, including the rise of Trump, squarely at Reagan's feet.  You can find many clips on YT that pertain to this. His busting of the unions in 1981 proved to be in many minds including my own, the requiem for middle class prosperity as it had come to be known. By 1987 we had a greater homeless problem than at any time since the Great Depression. In addition to the lumber and paper comment, he was also credited with declaring ketchup to be a vegetable.

I have seen his program sporadically. Donald Trump is the logical consequence of Ronald Reagan as the cultural constraints on political meanness from the Right disappeared. When that meanness became a cornerstone of American politics, with the likes of Newt Gingrich, Jack Abramoff, Lee Atwater, Karl Rogue, and Ralph Reed, we entered the mental state of a Crisis Era. If we were not on the bandwagon of cruelty then we were trying to defend ourselves, which means that even if we hated the ideology we had become as entrenched in the Crisis Era.  

Quote:P2: Regarding RWR's attitude on jobs, there was a story I read in which the so-called Paycheck to Paycheck crowd often has to work two jobs for the same pay that one job once provided. They are for the most part a luckless lot, stuck in place, with very little room for escape save for some stroke of luck such as a lottery win. They were labeled Generation LIMBO. All caps because, from the information given I was able to create the perfect acronym. Lower Income Mostly Beyond Overhaul.

That was the Reagan solution for inflation -- cut the pay and take away opportunity (except to work longer and harder for less -- and always remember in your menial task to show that happy-to-serve-you smile and always show gratitude to investors and executives who get everything). I experienced it and I hated it. I saw the conspicuous consumption of  economic elites as in-your-face oppression. I toyed with Marxism for a while until I recognized how futile that was not only in forcing fundamental change of leadership but also in failing to prevent oppression. Many found their way toward nostalgia not so much for a more humane world but instead for one in which people not white, straight, male, and Christian -- this was when the Born-Again phenomenon came into existence, when the austerity of Presbyterianism in the heavily Scots-Irish Mountain South gave way to an angry and superstitious version of the Southern Baptist Church.  The most reactionary region of America is now the Mountain South, which used to be solidly Democratic because it recognized the New Deal creating a modicum of prosperity. It elected culturally-conservative, but economically progressive Democrats like Wendell Ford, Terry Sanford, and William Fulbright. It now elects Tom Cotton and Marsha Blackburn instead of Blanche Lincoln and Al Gore.  

Quote:P3: I thought about the steroids remark a few time, but you are the first I have actually heard use it.  Perhaps fitting because it was during the Reagan years when Trump first hit the cultural landscape as a celebrity real estate developer. One time I did actually talk with a woman who had met him along with his recently deceased first wife. She was of the opinion that he was easier to talk with than she was.

Donald Trump may have been less rigid in his thought and more optimistic back then. he was still a piece of work. Of course, you must remember that Trump's first wife is not a native speaker of English. People not native speakers of English are very cautious about speaking, and are more likely to listen than speak. She was also educated (and indoctrinated) in a Communist-dominated country, She likely was not fully comfortable with American ways. Even showing a love for Czech culture (the Czechs have great musical and literary traditions) could have seemed suspect during the Cold War.   

Quote:P4: The AIDS scare definitely slammed the brakes on the sexual revolution, and not long after what was labeled the cocooning movement set in where one-time partiers were spending weekend night at home watching movies on their VCRs (now obsolete) and eating, say, takeout teriyaki. Demand for takeout food exploded some three decades before the convenience obsession went even further with home delivery now being nearly everywhere. Seems to me though that Americans tend to be homebodies during three out of the four turnings, that only during an Awakening is the sanctity of home and hearth seriously challenged.

The AIDS disaster was the nadir for the status of homosexuals. As for takeout food... also came the great surge of "casual dining" restaurants that reflects in part the cheapness of labor that makes such possible. Wait staff often relied upon tips that were much bigger than the nominal pay for wait staff. Illegal immigrants were often working in the kitchen or doing the cleaning -- they hardly got paid. 

Take-out food may reflect that people were picking something up, whether a pizza or teriyaki chicken, on the way from work to home because fully cooking a meal such as a pot roast or meatloaf took far too much time for a woman who had an office job. Not coincidentally, the end of the workday was typically dinnertime, especially if one had to stay a bit late. If the wife prepared a pot roast or meatloaf it was on a weekend when someone could attend the oven or slow-cooker. If she cooked meatloaf or pot-roast during the week, then it might not be ready until 9 o'clock. That was too late. By then the White Sox, Blackhawks, or Bulls game was well underway and hubby wanted nothing in the way. Look also at the plethora of prepared dishes that came in boxes at the grocery store. Out of the freezer and into the microwave, and done in five minutes. Or with the 'deli' section of most grocery stores. Do you want some rotisserie chicken, baked beans, and potato salad? Got it!    

Quote:P5: There is still much debate as to whether the mass lockdowns which decimated many if not most businesses for a period of several months was the way to go. Much of the residue remains despite a somewhat return to normalcy. People going out to eat again, etc. Thought not quite a return to previous congestion levels.

Many of the restaurants went take-out only. That hurt the waiters who had relied on tips unless they got paid a real wage to keep them from looking for something else. But let's remember that 

(1) there was already a shake-out in the casual-dining business. Places that had a waitress serving a hamburger, shake, and fries where this icon was 




what one saw... they are mostly gone. You can get much the same hamburger at "Chez Mac" without tipping the counterperson. If you have never eaten at a Big Boy, then you really haven't missed anything/

We also had a shake-out in the department store business and many specialty stores (typically in books, video, and music). Many venerable department stores are gone. So are Tower Records, Radio Shack, Brentano's, Waldenbooks, Musicland, Sam Goody, Blockbuster Video,  and Borders.   This was also mostly before COVID-19.  The explanation is simple enough: if you are making $4000 a month and paying $3200 in rent to what is basically a slumlord, then you are poor despite an impressive income. When the disposable income shrinks, then so does the consumer economy. 

Maybe we will make post-secondary education cheap again; maybe labor unions will recover their effectiveness and economic influence. Maybe we will quit seeing the most rapacious of plutocrats as successes that we must exempt from heavy taxation if we are to not kill the goose that lays the golden egg. (In fact, small business has typically been the engine of economic progress and high-quality customer service in America; Big Business is great for creating bureaucratic monoliths and buying politicians. We may need to sacrifice that and some high salaries if we are to get a just and equitable society in which far more people have a chance. We may have to scale back Big Government to reduce it to legitimate needs such as education, law enforcement, justice, road-building, welfare, and old-age security so that we can become a prosperous society based on small, community-based  business again. I remember when even banking, broadcasting, and certain small-scale manufacturing were nearly cottage industries. Those were the best aspects of the Good Old Days! (I'll pass on Jim Crow, homophobia, the Red Scare, male chauvinism, polio, and blood-alley highways, though).